Hugo! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Preface

  Chapter 1 Hurricane Hugo

  Chapter 2 Roots of Rebellion

  Chapter 3 A Revolutionary Is Born

  Chapter 4 Testing the Waters

  Chapter 5 A Sacred Oath

  Chapter 6 The Conspiracy Deepens

  Chapter 7 First Betrayals

  Chapter 8 The Massacre

  Chapter 9 Waiting in the Wings

  Chapter 10 Rebellion of the Angels

  Chapter 11 Jail

  Chapter 12 Secret Comandante's Good-Bye

  Chapter 13 On the Road

  Picture Section

  Chapter 14 Beauty and the Beast

  Chapter 15 To Power

  Chapter 16 A Birth and a Tragedy

  Chapter 17 First Defections

  Chapter 18 Oil Man

  Chapter 19 First Revolts and the Return of the Iran-Contra Crowd

  Chapter 20 The Coup

  Chapter 21 The President Is Missing

  Chapter 22 The Aftermath

  Chapter 23 Oil Strike

  Chapter 24 The Social Missions

  Chapter 25 The Recall

  Chapter 26 Striking Back

  Chapter 27 Twenty-First-Century Socialism

  Afterword

  Epilogue to the UK Edition

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Index

  ¡HUGO!

  ¡HUGO!

  The Hugo Chávez Story

  from Mud Hut

  to Perpetual Revolution

  BART JONES

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781409076940

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by The Bodley Head 2008

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Bart Jones 2008

  Bart Jones has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

  The Bodley Head

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  ISBN: 9781409076940

  Version 1.0

  For Elba and Frank

  "America is ungovernable.

  Those who serve the revolution

  plough the sea. The only thing to do

  in America is emigrate."

  Simón Bolívar

  "Those who make peaceful revolution

  impossible will make

  violent revolution inevitable."

  John F. Kennedy

  Preface

  Hugo Chávez and I were sitting alone on the second floor of the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela. It was close to midnight on April 30, 2007. Venezuela was minutes away from making a small bit of history by taking majority control of four multibillion-dollar oil projects in the eastern Orinoco River basin from international companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco, and Total.

  Chávez was overseeing the takeover from a table on a semi-enclosed outdoor patio. A thatch roof provided shelter. Several birdcages hung from it, and the birds occasionally chirped. It was tranquil. But in eastern Anzoátegui state, things were hardly placid. The situation was electric. Workers and executives from the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), accompanied by Venezuelan troops, were to take control of the private oil companies' installations at the stroke of midnight on May 1, International Workers Day. Workers would hoist Venezuelan flags and change the names of the companies. Sincor, for instance, would become PetroJunin, named after a famous battle in Peru that had been led by Chávez's hero, Simón Bolívar.

  Like many of Chávez's moves, the oil takeover was controversial. His detractors claimed it was another step in creating a totalitarian dictatorship modeled after Fidel Castro, his mentor. His supporters responded that he was proudly re-establishing national sovereignty over a strategic natural resource that had been exploited for years by foreign companies enjoying a virtual tax holiday.

  I had a privileged view as Chávez coordinated the takeover. We were alone on the patio from 11:10 P.M. to 1:30 A.M. — prime time for the president. It was my second interview with him in two days — a rare opportunity to spend time with a man flooded with interview requests.

  No one interrupted us save an attendant in street clothes who came in from time to time to ask if we wanted a cup of coffee or a glass of water.

  The previous night I had flown back with Chávez on the presidential jet from the city of Barquisimeto to Caracas, interviewing him in his private office in the plane. Then he invited me to drive up to Caracas in his car, and finally took me for a short walk outside Miraflores.

  Now, as midnight approached, Chávez got on his cell phone with Rafael Ramírez, the head of PDVSA. The president wanted to know which companies had not signed the contracts agreeing to turn over control to Venezuela. Conoco was the only company holding out, Ramirez told him.

  A small television was attached to the thatch roof, and Chávez was keeping one eye on it. The president of the state television network was talking live on the screen from Anzoátegui, declaring that the country was about to witness a historic moment. "It would be good if you could make a statement to the country at twelve on the dot, maybe in a cadena," Chávez told Ramirez, using the word for a legally mandated broadcast all networks were required to pick up. "Call Willian Lara," the communications minister, Chávez said. "No, I'll call him right now. Let me order a cadena from here. Don't speak very long. Not like Chávez," he joked.

  Within a few minutes Ramirez was speaking live on nearly every television station in the country. Chávez flipped the channels to make sure all the stations were complying. When he came to Channel 2 RCTV, he paused. The station was to lose its license to broadcast on May 27 and was engaged in a vigorous international campaign to denounce Chávez for crushing freedom of speech. The government contended that RCTV played an active role in a 2002 coup against the president, and its activities — such as journalists and politicians declaring on television that the president should be overthrown — would never be permitted in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission would have shut it down instantly. Nevertheless, when RCTV later did go off the air after the government refused to renew its license, Chávez came under worldwide attack; everyone from US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and President George W. Bush to human rights and free press organizations denounced his actions.

  Chávez was pleased when he saw RCTV complying with the cadena. "So they get even angrier," he said, laughing as he imagined the reaction of
RCTV executives being forced to broadcast the cadena.

  Ramirez spoke on television, and everything seemed to be proceeding smoothly. The PDVSA head ceremoniously gave an oil worker a red helmet — the color of the Bolivarian Revolution — to replace his blue one. The crowd in Anzoátegui cheered wildly.

  Getting to sit next to Hugo Chávez as he commanded the takeover was not easy. His aides told me in April 2007 they'd been flooded with more than a thousand requests for interviews — since January. Some said the best I could hope for would be a couple of quick questions in a hallway somewhere. In the process of researching this book, I spent nearly two years lobbying officials to be able to sit down with Chávez to discuss his life and his presidency. Many said they would do what they could — and then nothing happened.

  It was a far cry from when I lived in the country from 1992 to 2000, covering the ups and downs of Chávez's rise to power. I had interviewed Chávez a number of times, and stood not far from him on an outdoor terrace the night he won the presidency in 1998. Yet before his triumph, Chávez at times practically had to beg for media coverage. Once, when he returned from a trip to Colombia and called a press conference, only a few reporters showed up.

  Now, in early April 2007, my break finally came — or seemed to, anyway. Government officials called me in New York to tell me the interview with the president was all set. Wednesday, April 25, would be the day.

  I flew down a couple days early, showed up at the palace on the appointed day — and got stood up. "Se complicó la cosa," I was told — things got complicated. He couldn't do it.

  Disappointed and miffed, I decided to take advantage of the day off by interviewing the two most powerful men in the government besides Chávez — his brother Adán and his longtime vice president, José Vicente Rangel, who had recently stepped down from his post. Government officials assured me they were doing everything possible to get me in to see the president the next day.

  The following day, nothing happened — at least not until 3 P.M. By then I had given up hope and was mentally preparing to proceed with my scheduled flight back to New York the next day. But then a Miraflores aide called and informed me Chávez wanted me to accompany him on the presidential jet to Barquisimeto for a meeting with Bolivian president Evo Morales and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, among others. I would be able to interview the president in the plane on the way back Sunday, or on Monday morning in the palace.

  That Saturday morning we headed to Barquisimeto on the presidential jet. Only Chávez wasn't aboard. He missed the flight on his own airplane, which took some of his ministers, media people, security agents, and me to Barquisimeto, then turned around and went back to Caracas to get the president. I didn't talk to Chávez during the weekend — he was busy tending to Morales, Ortega, and others.

  But as we headed back to Caracas on the Airbus 319 that Sunday night, I was summoned into the presidential office. I was getting a rare chance to spend extended time one-on-one with the man who was shaking up Venezuela and trying to spread his Bolivarian Revolution throughout the world.

  After we landed in Caracas, forty-five minutes later, we spoke in his car during the twenty-minute trip to the palace and then talked some more at Miraflores. Finally we bid each other good night, and Chávez promised to see me the next day around noon to finish the interview.

  I doubted it would happen, since he had already spent more time with me than he had with most other journalists and had given me some unusual access on the plane and in the car. Moreover, Venezuelans are famous for making appointments they never keep.

  Noon came and went with no word from Miraflores. Around 3 P.M. I started to prepare to head back to New York the next morning. But about 5:15 P.M. my cell phone rang with a call from the palace: Be there at 8 P.M. The president will meet with you.

  I showed up at the appointed hour, and then waited three hours. It was just after eleven when I was summoned upstairs to see the president.

  In conversations that night and the previous one we talked for nearly four hours. We covered a lot of territory, from Chávez's impoverished childhood to the 2002 coup in which he was almost killed . . . and at least one sensitive topic he had never spoken about publicly and that I feared might bring the interview to an abrupt end.

  ¡HUGO!

  1

  Hurricane Hugo

  Hugo Chávez's presidency was slipping out of his hands. Hundreds of thousands of protestors were marching toward the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 11, 2002, demanding that he resign. "Get out Chávez, traitor!" some yelled. "We're going to topple the government!" "Chávez is going to pay!" It was one of the largest protest marches in Venezuelan history, a diverse coalition of men, women, and even children waving flags, blowing whistles, and banging pots. Many had their faces painted yellow, red, and blue, the colors of Venezuela's flag.

  Three years into his presidency Chávez was a hated man among some Venezuelans. They believed he was a messianic demagogue, another Fidel Castro who was destroying the country with a half-baked experiment in communism. To the protestors, Chávez had divided Venezuela between rich and poor, pushing a peaceful nation to the brink of civil war. He dismissed the wealthy elites who led the opposition as "squealing pigs," "rancid oligarchs," and "the squalid ones." He denounced the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in Venezuela as a "tumor" and "devils in vestments." Chávez was an embarrassment to the protestors, a crackpot caudillo who was inciting class warfare and plunging the country into economic chaos.

  But as word spread in the capital city's teeming mountainside barrios that the protestors had illegally changed the route of their march at the last minute and were converging on Miraflores, several thousand of Chávez's supporters jumped on motorcycles and public buses to head to the palace. They vowed to defend the president to the death. To them, he was a messiah. He was the first president in Venezuela's history to stand up for millions of poor people who made up a majority of the population. Venezuela possessed the largest oil reserves in the world outside the Middle East and was one of the largest foreign suppliers to the United States, yet most of its population was mired in poverty. Many blamed a corrupt ruling elite for pillaging the oil wealth and amassing private fortunes. While bus drivers, electricians, and teachers lived in shacks, the elites jetted off to Europe and the United States for vacations and lived in gated mansions.

  A few hundred of the Chavistas gathered on an overpass near Miraflores called Llaguno Bridge. To distinguish themselves from the protestors, many had their faces painted red, Chávez's color. Down on the streets, thin lines of Metropolitan Police and National Guardsmen tried to keep the groups apart. Clothing stores, coffee shops, and restaurants that sold corn bread arepas were closed, with metal gates pulled down to protect the windows. The hot Caribbean sun was beating down on the city. Tear gas choked the air.

  At about 3:20 P.M. one of the anti-Chávez protestors, twenty-nine-year- old Aristóteles Aranguren, was standing on Baralt Avenue about seven blocks from Miraflores when the first shots rang out. He wasn't sure where they came from, but he assumed it was the Chavistas. The bald, freckle-faced former soldier and fifth-grade teacher flinched and ducked behind a tank-like vehicle called the Whale. It was owned by the Metropolitan Police and had suddenly turned onto Baralt from a side street. Aranguren started running backward and had gone just a few steps when a woman on the seventh floor of a nearby office building yelled out a window, "Watch out! They're bringing someone wounded!" A group of men came running down the street carrying the limp, bloody body of a man by the arms and legs. The man was slipping from their grasp, so they paused to get a better hold.

  Aranguren ran over to see if he could help with some of the first-aid techniques he had learned in the military. The victim was about twenty and dressed in black — shirt, jacket, and dungarees. His body was limp, and his head was hanging to the side. A bullet had pierced it on the left side just above the ear, exiting on the right. It left an inch-wide hole throu
gh which Aranguren could see part of the man's gray, bloody brain. In his free hand one of the rescuers was carrying a bloody gray glob that looked like another part of the young man's brain. He was bleeding profusely. The back of his head was soaked through in blood, matting down his hair.

  Aranguren was enraged at the sight of the young man, who appeared dead. The protestors had come to peacefully demand that Chávez resign. Aranguren had never imagined the march would turn bloody. Maybe some tear gas from the police. Maybe some fistfights with the Chavistas. But never gunshots.

  Keeping a wary eye on the bridge, he retreated another twenty yards south on Baralt. More gunshots rang out. He could see the leaves shake on a tree in front of a McDonald's as bullets whizzed by. At the corner of University Avenue, he encountered a second revolting scene: a man lying faceup and unconscious on the sidewalk. A bullet hole left a gaping wound on the left side of his head. Five protestors stood around him in shocked silence. One held his head slightly off the ground and unsuccessfully pressed a handkerchief against the wound to try to stop the bleeding. The cloth was soaked with blood.

  Aranguren quickly surveyed the ghastly scene, and was struck by a chilling thought. Both men were killed with a single bullet to the head. Were snipers taking people out? He'd undergone training in the military in how to neutralize snipers, and this seemed to fit the bill. He glanced at the rooftops of buildings up and down the street, but didn't see anything unusual. Then he took off running, turning his back to the overpass and yelling to the crowd, "There are snipers! Go back! Two people are already dead!"

  He had gone about thirty yards when, on the other side of the street, he saw the head of a man running parallel to him jerk forward abruptly as if someone had pushed him from behind. The man then crumpled to the ground. He was thin, with a crew cut and no shirt. He had taken a bullet to the head, which now had a small stain on it. He lay on his right side on the sidewalk and did not move. It was the third person Aranguren saw with a bullet in the head. The shooting had started barely a minute ago.